 You really have to love electronics to give up working in the soap opera industry for it. Meet Mary Ann Giorgio, MXL Mics’ marketing and communications specialist, who did just that. “After I graduated from college, I was a teacher for a brief period of time,” she said. “It didn’t work out too well, so someone suggested I look into becoming a writer and editor. I became an editor for the Occupational Safety & Health Administration. I was proofreading and editing federal regulations, which is boring stuff. But you have to pay your dues. I eventually moved onto magazines in the early ’90s. I started with a trade magazine that covered car stereo installations. That was a big business then. Nobody kept the original stereo in their car. Your grandmother wouldn’t even do that. It was a healthy industry until Ford, Toyota and others started rolling out OEM radios that were pretty good. So the magazine got thinner and thinner (due to decreased advertising) and it was time for me to look for a new publishing industry.”
Giorgio switched gears considerably by becoming a field reporter for a soap opera magazine in New Jersey. She covered The Young and the Restless and Days of Our Lives. The job was fun. Giorgio was able to speak to celebrities and was reporting on an industry many people follow religiously.
So why leave the soap opera industry, which is clearly what she did? “I never felt comfortable in that industry,” she said. “It wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be. I liked being a bigger fish in the smaller consumer electronics pond. So I went back to the industry and took a job for a magazine called Audio Video Interiors. It was a high-end, popular consumer book. I was editor-in-chief of that magazine for six years. But the publishing industry took a turn. I was considering getting back into trade magazines, but was recruited by Kenwood. My car stereo background came in handy. Then, I was recruited by Marshall Electronics (parent of MXL).”
Giorgio, who was born in Pittsburgh, moved to her permanent California home when she was 10. She has served MXL for the past one-and-a-half years. She handles MXL’s marketing communications and handles writing manuals and other technical writing. But that’s only one part of the job. The other part, which is equally important, is being a liaison for the press. Giorgio has a unique advantage when it comes to that facet of her position. She knows exactly what it’s like to sit in the music magazine editor’s chair. “I always think of myself as an editor. I work on the manufacturing end now. But I worked for 15 years on the publishing side. You can’t take that out of the girl. People often think editors have 10 people working for them. They are lucky if they have a managing editor. Oftentimes, they need to borrow an editor from another magazine to help out. I understand the pressure and get the editor exactly what he/she wants. If an editor asks for something, I drop everything immediately and get him/her good copy and good photos. When I was an editor, that’s what I wanted.”
Women are certainly in the minority in our industry. However, we are seeing female employment growth. Has being a female provided any specific advantages or disadvantages for Giorgio? “I can’t help but compare MI to consumer electronics (CE), where I worked previously,” she said. “CE was extremely male dominated. There were very few women in manager or marketing positions. And a female vice president was very rare. If you ran into one, it was quite a novelty.
“Some men in the CE industry assumed I didn’t know much about consumer electronics,” continued Giorgio. “But I actually could install stereos and home theater systems. But you can’t just say you know something. I had to prove it over time.”
MI was different for Giorgio, however. She found MI to be much smaller, but also a little friendlier than CE. “People in MI never assumed I didn’t know anything,” she said. “In fact, engineers at MXL heard about my CE background and assumed I did know about a lot of things. But I still had to endure a six-month learning curve when moving to MI because there isn’t much overlap. For example, I had to know the difference between a receiver and a preamp compressor. I just wrote a manual on a preamp compressor. It was much harder than anything I ever wrote in the CE industry.”
Southern California-based Marshall Electronics is one of the largest manufacturers of broadcast monitors in the world. The MXL Microphone division was founded more than a decade ago. MXL manufactures affordable recording condenser microphones.
What made Giorgio a cut above other candidates for the job at MXL? “I think the Kenwood name was big for me. The name still packs some punch.”
Added Giorgio: “Another thing I believe MXL liked about me is I told them I’m not a button-up type of person. I said I’m flexible. I can work in a big environment or a small environment. In today’s environment, you have to be flexible. I’m really an easy going person.”
Giorgio is a single mother who spends most of her free time making sure her 10-year-old son, Nick, has as good a childhood as she had. “Every night we go out into our yard and play baseball,” Giorgio said.
Giorgio loves to take Nick to L.A. Dodgers and Angels baseball games.
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